Oolite Bulletins

I'll check out those resources, but I'm pretty sure I've hit the limit of what I can do. All I really wanted was to fly a Supercobra that didn't look so depressingly plain when I had your textures applied. It's good enough for me at the moment. I'll look forward to someone actually building a better Supercobra with shaders and proper textures.

Smivs wrote:

spara wrote:

I'm actually going to _play_ the game for a while and then come back to oxping .

Ha, good luck with that. The last time I said that it lasted about a week

It lasted for two days . The idea of better integration with the game just keeps on bounding in my head and while playing I understood what the real problem was and a simple solution to it. I changed the naming style of RandomHits to the naming style of random shipnames oxp and it feels a lot better.

As for marks/criminals/hunters in other systems, maybe a rare randomly inserted RH-ship with a normal pirate/hunter AI might do. Have to test a bit.

metatheurgist wrote:

I'll look forward to someone actually building a better Supercobra with shaders and proper textures.

Let's see, if someone takes the bait. I'm feeling a bit tempted, but I'll try to resist .

spara wrote:

Smivs wrote:

spara wrote:

I'm actually going to _play_ the game for a while and then come back to oxping .

Ha, good luck with that. The last time I said that it lasted about a week

It lasted for two days .

<Chuckles>

spara wrote:

metatheurgist wrote:

I'll look forward to someone actually building a better Supercobra with shaders and proper textures.

Let's see, if someone takes the bait. I'm feeling a bit tempted, but I'll try to resist .

I don't think I'll be tempted TBH. I've always had a bit of a problem with the SuperCobra - it's just a bit too super! It claims to be bigger than a Cobra 3 whereas the Wiki dimensions suggest it is actually a bit smaller, and even if it was a bit bigger doubling the cargo capacity and adding extra engines and energy banks etc just doesn't ring true to me. Even the uber-price doesn't make it seem 'real' somehow, so it's not a ship I'd be interested in.
Dr Nil's ShieldTail on the other hand is interesting. This is the companion ship to the Purple Haze which I've just given a makeover to in spara's RH update. They both appear in the Teretrurus OXP, and so once my house move is out of the way I plan on updating that OXP. I'll keep the specs the same (with some subtle changes to bring the whole thing up to date for Oolite v1.77) but both will have fully updated graphics with emission, normal and specular mapping. Thanks to spara for suggesting this update to me, and leading me astray again!

Smivs wrote:

I don't think I'll be tempted TBH. I've always had a bit of a problem with the SuperCobra - it's just a bit too super!

I'm with you here. I don't like to use it as a generic ship oxp, but as a part of the random hits, as a level 3 uber ship, then it's ok. One of the reasons I like random hits so much is that it allows me to have certain interesting and/or uber ships in game without tilting the balance of the main game.

Smivs wrote:

Thanks to spara for suggesting this update to me, and leading me astray again!

I believe I have managed to change the naming scheme of random hits to follow random shipnames style. Now you'll have to pay attention to the name of the mark as the naming looks like other ship's names and ships flying around the space bar integrate better to the environment. If someone wants to give it a test drive and possibly comment how it feels, here is a zip file containing the changed js-scripts and descriptions file. Overwrite the files in 1.5.1 and it should work.

Download: https://app.box.com/s/4qmygb5879ykd57flg6p

After playing a while with it, I felt that there is no reason to add npc hunters/pirates/marks randomly anywhere. First of all that would affect the game balance, which I'm not eager to do. Secondly with this change in conjunction with random shipnames the distinction between random hits ships and other ships is not that striking any more.

I'm enjoying immensely the number of re-decorating projects that are going on at the moment! They make the 'verse much more beautiful and consistent! I'm in the process of deciding which oxps I want in my new commander's game at the moment (a process that has been on-going and I show few signs of ever actually getting around to playing, but the intention is there) and having a machine that is capable of using the nicely textured/shaded oxps, I find that some of the older ones don't quite match up, which is a shame...

All-in-all, keep up the good work, commanders!

I am re-texturing the Cobra 3XT for the SuperCobra. Will post something soon for approval to finish. Or, just say so now and I will go no further with it.

CaptSolo wrote:

I am re-texturing the Cobra 3XT for the SuperCobra. Will post something soon for approval to finish. Or, just say so now and I will go no further with it.

This is great . I felt a bit sad when I removed it from the oxp as it is featured in Drew's book. Glad you're working on it.

Super Cobra Wings3D Views:
Dorsal, ventral and aft





Note: Model has hard edges where the hulls come together as well as the aft section but soft edges elsewhere. If you want all hard edges, let me know. Other suggestions welcome but time limited for further tinkering with textures.

Texture looks real good Solo. A huge upgrade from the original already. Waiting to see it in-game or some in-game shots to see shaders at work. One little request though. The original SuperCobra has two red stripes and I would like to see them used somehow. You're the artist of course, so it's up to you .

As for soft and hard edges, I think they are just fine the way they are.

spara wrote:

The original SuperCobra has two red stripes and I would like to see them used somehow.

Look at the first image above. Do you want red stripes on the belly too?

CaptSolo wrote:

spara wrote:

The original SuperCobra has two red stripes and I would like to see them used somehow.

Look at the first image above. Do you want red stripes on the belly too?

Looks like SuperCobra now . The original has stripes on the belly, but I think it looks better without them.

Now it needs a good normalmap.
I could help, but I don't know if I can pull the "good" part off.

Purchased Super Cobra at Isinor. Following courtesy of Cim's [wiki]Camera Drones[/wiki]:




This has emission map in alpha channel of diffuse texture. Spara, I will pm you shipdata for: "random_hits_patrol_supercobra", which is like_ship for all instances of this beast. My job is done.

That SuperCobra is pretty funky.

By the way: I've found NPC SuperCobras to be too much of a pushover in the past. But now, what with OXPs that in various ways (partly through Oolite's recently retooled 'accuracy' setting) make NPCs more dangerous, that may not be the case. I'll try to check.

UK_Eliter wrote:

That SuperCobra is pretty funky.

By the way: I've found NPC SuperCobras to be too much of a pushover in the past. But now, what with OXPs that in various ways (partly through Oolite's recently retooled 'accuracy' setting) make NPCs more dangerous, that may not be the case. I'll try to check.

By default Skilled NPCs won't affect the ships in RH oxp. I'm planning on including a simple shipdata-override addon oxp that enables the use of Skilled NPCs. Another thing I've been pondering is the use of side lasers. I would like to give all possible ships side pulse lasers. This could be another shipdata-override addon oxp.

So there will be a close to the original experience with upgraded graphics. This means that I'll drop Chopped Cobra and Cobra Mark IV now that we have reduxed versions of Phaze and SuperCobra. For those who want extra challenge there will be a option to enable Skilled NPCs and another option to enable side pulse lasers.

And I thought I was done with this .